Various games are played using playing cards, where a typical game uses one or more decks, which may have 52 cards of various values and suits. Examples of such games that are popular in the United States are poker, blackjack, bridge, and canasta. In other countries, different games of cards are similarly popular, and may use decks of cards having more or less than 52 cards, and having different markings. Players of games of cards have an interest in ensuring that the playing cards are dispensed for the game in a random manner, giving no one player an unfair advantage. Preparing a deck of cards for play of the game may be accomplished either manually or automatically. In the case of manual preparation, the cards may be cut, riffled and stripped. The process is performed multiple times. It is believed that performing a cut-riffle process approximately 7 times will result in a sufficiently random distribution of cards within a deck. However this is time consuming and it is common to perform the process only 3-4 times.
The most popular styles of playing cards, those intended for bridge or poker are of two relatively standardized shapes in planar view. The most common sizes for playing cards are poker size (2½ in×3½ in; 63 mm×88 mm, or B8 size according to ISO 216) and bridge size (2¼ in×3½ in, approx. 56 mm×88 mm). Other sizes are also available. The cards are typically fabricated of a paper or a plastic, or a combination thereof, and variety of surface textures, card weight and flexing properties are considered acceptable by players, and differ by manufacturer and style of card.